Chinese keyboard?

[CleoQc]

Does anyone know what I need to do to type simplified Chinese characters on a regular Windows machine?
I can handle accented letters é, and the Spanish punctuation ñ ¿? etc, but Chinese??? (Simplified Mandarin)

[CleoQc]

你 好

[Ester Maria]

Go to Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages -> Instill files for East Asian languages.

I suppose that should do it.

[Chinese Teacher]

Well, it helps if you know how to type pinyin. If you do, then the standard Windows Language input is fine. But it can be very annoying checking each character as you go along. So after you change that feature in your Control Panel, I suggest you do a search for "Google Pinyin" and download the toolbar. It's usually the first option, but it's all in Chinese. I hope you can read it! ;) The download button is big and blue - cant be missed. Once you have that, then when you choose CH on your language bar, be sure to switch from the standard input to the Google one. It's a smart keyboard so you may be able to write full sentences in pinyin before having to check the characters. And it'll automatically move to the top of the list any characters you use most often. I'm a MAC person, and I wish there were a MAC version, b/c I LOVE Google Pinyin. It makes typing Chinese SO MUCH EASIER!

[CleoQc]

I ended up going onto the Microsoft website and follow their instructions. It did install the language pack, but came with no instructions! With the help of my daughter (she's the one who's studying Mandarin, not me!) we were able to figure out that the input is done through pinyin.

Chinese Teacher, your google toolbar sounds intriguing. We'll try that, but my daughter is not advanced enough to read a whole page on the web. As for me, I'm good with computers and can figure out a few things with the help of various translators, but I'm pretty clueless otherwise!

[CleoQc]

Woohoo ! I rock!!!

你 好 人 西安 三

（those are not meant to mean anything btw, just random words)


That little toolbar is great!
I installed the whole thing without having any idea what was on the screen ;-) including the "I agree to the terms and conditions"。

[Chinese Teacher]

Excellent! Isnt that fun?! :)

[MaMa2005]

Woohoo ! I rock!!!

你 好 人 西安 三

（those are not meant to mean anything btw, just random words)


That little toolbar is great!
I installed the whole thing without having any idea what was on the screen ;-) including the "I agree to the terms and conditions"。

Glad you said that because DS takes Mandarin and I know some pinyin and what you wrote sure didn't translate!!!!! :lol:

[CleoQc]

Glad you said that because DS takes Mandarin and I know some pinyin and what you wrote sure didn't translate!!!!! :lol:

hee hee.. I was just asking DD for whatever character she could remember.. But true to her self she had very little retention once classes were over...

[naters]

We type Chinese using a methodology called PINYIN(also including five-stroke input method, but it is getting less and less popular now). To use such method we need in the first place an input software. And second we should know how to input word according to their pronounciation, ussually we learn this when we are at our elementary school.

There are many kind of such software for this, the most famous and popular is now sougou pingyin input software(google also have such input software but is less popular).

Here for example I would like to input "很好", in line with pronounciation and pinyin methodology. 很 is "hen", 好 is "hao"

so we type "henhao" together and the input methodology will autometically organize the phrase 很好, sometimes there are also phrase with same pronounciation, then we will have many alternatives in the list for our selection.

here's the snapshot for typing 很好.